In New Book, Artist Glenn Palmer-Smith Examines 33 Works

Harried New Yorkers rarely stop and gaze at the murals incorporated into the city's landscape—much less understand the quirky stories and ego clashes that led to the creation of many of them. Artist Glenn Palmer-Smith is trying to change that in a new book.

"It's fascinating, the collision of the personalities, the artists, the architects, the interior designers. The egos!" Mr. Palmer-Smith said.

Roy Lichtenstein's 'Mural with Blue Brushstroke' hangs in the lobby of AXA Equitable Center on Seventh Avenue between 51st and 52nd streets.
Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal

Glenn Palmer Smith

Called "Murals of New York City: The best of New York's public paintings from Bemelmans to Parrish," Mr. Palmer-Smith's book features large-scale photos by Joshua McHugh of 33 works around the city. The shots are accompanied by essays by Mr. Palmer-Smith, which usually describe moments of conflict and drama in the murals' creation and life span.

One back story recounted in the book involves a communism-inspired mural, complete with an image of Vladimir Lenin, that adorned the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza for a brief period in 1933. When Nelson Rockefeller—the future New York governor and vice president of the U.S.—ordered painter Diego Rivera to remove the portrait, his refusal resulted in the mural being demolished and taken away in wheelbarrows, to be replaced later by a more capitalism-friendly work by José María Sert, which survives today.

Another clash came at the King Cole Bar and Salon at the St. Regis Hotel—where American painter Maxfield Parrish created a mural behind the carved oak bar called "Old King Cole."

The story behind the artwork, according to the book, is that businessman John Jacob Astor IV assigned Mr. Parrish in 1906 to paint him as the king, seated on a throne. To show his distaste for the request, Mr. Parrish added nearby courtesans in the mural grimacing as if smelling something foul coming from the king.

Large murals can transform a space and are also "permanent, more or less," said Mr. Palmer-Smith. "If you put a frame around it, then it's a painting and that can move from building to building like a fickle lover who just goes wherever you're paid to go. But murals [are] kind of set."

Mr. Palmer-Smith worked as a fashion photographer in Paris before starting his own agency for photographers. He quit the business in 2000 and started painting and restoring murals for private homeowners and on public buildings, in addition to doing his own artwork.

At the AXA Equitable Center building on 51st Street and Seventh Avenue, the 62-foot-high "Mural with Blue Brushstroke" by Roy Lichtenstein adorns the atrium. It is a jumble of geometric shapes and brush strokes that Mr. Palmer-Smith described as an "homage to about a half a dozen famous artists."

Murals, like skyscrapers, are so much a part of New York's architecture that they can fall victim to the harried way the city's inhabitants go about their days.

"I think for most people it's just wallpaper, I don't think they really see," Mr. Palmer-Smith said, citing a friend who worked as a stockbroker in the AXA Equitable Center and seemed oblivious to the Lichtenstein mural.

Unlike paintings, murals are "like a whole environment, you walk into the painting, you're a part of the painting, [instead] of being observed, framed and isolated on a wall. You become a part of the whole of the space," Mr. Palmer-Smith said.

Murals can also give a place cachet, the author said, citing the example of Bemelmans Bar inside the Carlyle Hotel, which features the whimsical figures of author Ludwig Bemelmans children's book, "Madeline."

"Imagine trying to charge somebody 22 bucks for a glass of wine without those murals," Mr. Palmer-Smith said.

The book also features murals at New York state Supreme Court and a 2009 Julie Mehretu piece for Goldman Sachs.

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